me

My humblest apologies for the lengthy stretch of silence. I’d like to liken this to the break that Hamlet takes from the stage in Act 4, except (a) I didn’t get kidnapped by pirates, and (b) if Hamlet is my narrative arc, then I’m only in Act 1, if that. Can you take breaks from…

With my Hamlet & Ophelia auditions drawing nigh (really damn nigh!), I realize I need to make some choices about what I’m after in these two characters. It’s all well and good to have faith that “my Hamlet” will emerge out of the woodwork on audition day. But it would be a latter-day tragedy if…

“Round One” of Hamlet auditions have been announced: April 11-12, I’ll be auditioning actors for the roles of Hamlet and Ophelia. This is a nerve-wracking process, and not just for the actors. What if nobody shows up? Cape Breton’s theatre scene has recently experienced an impressive growth spurt, with the addition of several new theatre…

This is another one of my earliest encounters with Hamlet, although I’m having trouble figuring out exactly when I would have run into it. Part of the problem is the convoluted history of just about any major comics publishing line, but particularly the history of Classics Illustrated. From the Wikipedia page: Classics Illustrated is a…

As I have already described, my first exposure to Hamlet (after Games Magazine, and the Black Swan) was almost certainly Zeffirelli’s film version, in 1990. I soon followed it with Kevin Kline’s version (on VHS). But it could be argued that you can’t really experience Hamlet until you’ve seen it performed on the stage. The…

This post is not about Hamlet. Not really. But it’s about Shakespeare, and theatre, and especially my own co-dependency with same. Last night I watched a documentary called Now: In the Wings on a World Stage. The subject is a 2011 world tour of Bridge Theatre’s production of Richard III, directed by Sam Mendes and…

In Grade 10 I started becoming obsessed with Shakespeare. The chain of causality is hazy, now — surely there was more to it than a Games Magazine article — but a quick browse through my diaries from that year proves that I was in pretty deep, even before fall term was over: October 18, 19–:…

Today, two weeks into my Hamletian blogsperiment, it feels like the time is right to start talking about my own plans for producing the play in 2016. I’ll be revealing my hand very slowly, partly because I know this medium has the potential to generate excitement and suspense amongst the local populace (local, in my case,…

Hamlet was the first play I ever read voluntarily. After becoming intrigued about it through a Games Magazine puzzle, I sought it out during my first year of high school. I was taking English AP, the advanced class, and we had just read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the first of two assigned Shakespeare plays. The…

When I ask students how they first became aware of Hamlet, their answers are vague. Some of them remember seeing the Simpsons parody, while others recall being informed that the plot of The Lion King borrows heavily from something called Hamlet. Mostly, there seems to be a gradual, generalized awareness, like pieces of a vast…